Seoul Mayor Park Won-soon and Gwangju Mayor Lee Yong-sup join other celebrities at a ceremony to unveil a mascot of the 2019 World Aquatics Championships, at Yongsan Railroad Station in Seoul on April.2.

A poster of the 2019 World Aquatics Championships. (Photos:The Organizing Committee of the 18th FINA World Championships Gwangju 2019)

The 2019 World Aquatics Championships will be held in Gwangju from July 12 through July 28. The championships, officially known as the 18th FINA World Aquatics Championships, will take place under the theme “Dive into PEACE.”

True to the theme, the Gwangju Municipal government and the Organizing Committee for the 2019 World Aquatics Championships said the upcoming sports extravaganza will be made peace-, eco-friendliness-, culture-oriented, and low-cost and high-efficiency. The bodies said they have a strategy of “catching two rabbits with one stone”: pursuing peace and hosting the championships in a booming and economical perspective. To this end, they are seeking to entice a North Korean delegation to participate.

During the biennial Championships, participants will compete in six game categories swimming, diving, artistic swimming, water polo, high diving, and open water swimming at the venues in Gwangju and the Yeosu area in Jeollanam-do.

Seventy-six competitions will take place and 186 gold medals will be up for grabs. National contingents in the championships will take up 43 percent of the total quota, to be qualified for competition at the upcoming 2020 Tokyo Summer Olympic Games.

Roughly 7,000 people around the world will participate in the 2019 World Aquatics Championships. Among the those expected to compete are Caeleb Remel Dressel, an American swimmer, who won seven gold medals at the 2017 World Aquatics Championships in Budapest, and Sun Yang, a Chinese Olympic and world-record-holding competitive swimmer.

The 2019 World Aquatics Championships will coincide with the World Masters Competition, a contest of swimming afficinados from around the world. The joint hosting of the two events will be the first one since the 2015 FINA World Championships in Kazan, Russia.

Swimming competitions will take place at the main stadium of the Championships, the International Swimming Center of Nambu University. The swimming center has been expanded to 10,648 seats, becoming an internationally fist-class certified facility. Artistic swimming and diving will be held at the Yeomju Stadium.

High diving competitions, the gem of the swimming Championsips, will take place at a temporarily installed facility of Chosun University with Mt. Mudung in the background. Water polo will be held at the ground of Nambu University, while open water competitions, a kind swimming marathon, will take place at the Expo Sea Park in Yeosu. About 8,000 players, mostly members of swimming clubs, will participate in the World Masters Competition.

The athletes are mostly members of swimming clubs from countries such as the United States, Europe, Japan and China.
Medals will be awarded to first through sixth ranked competitors.

The World Masters Competition will have sixty-three competitions in five categories, except high diving, Gwangju will be the third Asian city to host the 2019 World Aquatics Championships following the 2001 Fukuoka Championships and 2011 Shanghai Championships.